Clare Boothe Luce (1903–87) built St. Ann Chapel in 1951. Luce was a versatile author, playwright, congresswoman, and US Ambassador to Italy. Her best-known play is the 1936 hit The Women. She was also a war correspondent for Life magazine, and she was the first American woman to represent the United States to a major world power. Luce was Connecticut’s first congresswoman (1943–47) and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.
In 1944, just months shy of graduating from Stanford University, Luce’s daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, was killed in an automobile accident. The bereft Clare Boothe Luce subsequently became a Roman Catholic in 1946. After exploring several options through the following few years, Luce funded the construction of a Catholic chapel in Palo Alto next to the Norris House, home of Stanford’s Catholic students’ Newman Club. Luce erected the chapel in memory of her daughter. The name of St. Ann Chapel, which was dedicated in 1951, is a happy coincidental play on the names of Saint Anne (or Anna), the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and hence the maternal grandmother of Jesus, and Ann Clare Brokaw.
In 1952, André Girard is thinking of returning to France, when he receives the orders he has always dreamed of, the decoration of several churches in New York, California, Vermont. Among other things, he painted the stained glass windows of the Saint Ann Chapel.
“This has been my dream since I was 16– to do the drama of the Crucifixion in life-sized paintings. Now I have the opportunity to transform this Chapel into a living monument.”
—André Girard, 26 June 1952
Several decades thereafter, Stanford’s Newman Center moved to Stanford University. The Diocese of San Jose sold the property in 1998, and the old Newman Center became a private residence. The Henry Luce Foundation acquired the chapel and, in April 2003, sold the chapel to the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK). Thus began the historic revival. The APCK restored the sanctuary to the original configuration of architect Vincent Raney and refurbished the chapel and landscaped the gardens: St. Ann Chapel was reborn.
Today, the choir fills the chapel with soaring song. With the ancient, magnificent Anglican liturgy, the stunning artistic setting, and the divine music, St. Ann Chapel is once more a holy place of worship.